Mike & Ed’s Barbecue

Mike & Ed’s Barbecue has been a fixture on Crawford Road in Phenix City since the mid-1980s, when two men from outside the restaurant business decided to buy the barbecue joint they already loved eating at. Mike Gullat and Ed Cook were colleagues in the insurance industry in 1985 when they purchased an established Phenix City barbecue restaurant, already confident in the quality of the food because they had been regular customers themselves. Four decades later, the restaurant they built still carries their names above the door.

Over the years, the recipes have been refined and the sauce lineup expanded, and the restaurant has picked up a string of local awards along the way. What started as a single Phenix City location grew into a small family of restaurants across West Georgia and East Alabama, including a Columbus, Georgia location on Schomburg Road, while the original Phenix City restaurant at 2001 Crawford Road remains the anchor of the operation. The building has been remodeled in recent years, giving the dining room a cleaner, more updated feel while the smokers keep doing the same job they always have.

The menu covers the full range of Deep South barbecue standards. Pulled and chopped pork comes served on a sandwich, piled onto a plate with a choice of sides, or dressed Ed’s Special style with slaw, pickles, and hot sauce, or Mike’s Special style with cole slaw and hickory sauce mixed right in. Ribs are smoked low and slow and sold by the plate or the pound, and barbecue chicken comes as a half bird with bread or with a pair of sides on the side. Smoked turkey and smoked ham round out the smoked-meat lineup, available sliced on a sandwich or piled onto a platter.

Beyond the smoked meats, the kitchen turns out a full slate of Southern sides and comfort food. Buffalo wings come in portions from six pieces up to a fifty-piece party order, chicken fingers are sold by the platter or in family-size fifteen-piece orders, and a bowl of homemade Brunswick stew or barbecue stew is available in sizes ranging from a small cup to a thirty-two-ounce container for taking home. Sides include barbecue beans, potato salad, cole slaw, mac and cheese, and both curly and regular fries, and the dessert and drink list runs to homemade lemonade and gallon-size sweet tea for anyone feeding a crowd.

For bigger groups, the restaurant runs all-you-can-eat specials on wings, barbecue chicken, and a combined ribs-and-pork option, and a separate catering menu covers everything from a tailgate package with two pounds of meat and a stack of sides to full food trays and whole smoked turkey breasts for holiday gatherings. Online ordering runs through ChowNow, and the restaurant also sells its house barbecue sauce and branded merchandise for regulars who want to bring home a bit of Mike & Ed’s.

Mike & Ed’s Barbecue is open Monday through Saturday from 10:30 in the morning until 8 at night and closed on Sundays. The Phenix City dining room does steady lunch and dinner business with locals who have been coming for decades alongside newer customers drawn in by the restaurant’s reputation across the Chattahoochee Valley. Between the smoked meats, the stew, and a sauce recipe that has stayed largely the same since 1985, Mike & Ed’s has held onto the identity of a family-run Phenix City barbecue restaurant even as it has grown into a small regional operation.

The dining room keeps things simple and family friendly, with counter ordering, casual seating, and a menu board built for regulars who already know their order and newcomers working through the options for the first time. A chef salad topped with a choice of two smoked meats gives lighter eaters an option alongside the plates and sandwiches, and a jumbo breaded steak sandwich and a chili dog round out a short list of non-barbecue items. Prices stay on the affordable side for a full smoked-meat plate, keeping the restaurant a regular weeknight option for Phenix City families rather than an occasional splurge.

Visitors to Phenix City looking for old-school Alabama barbecue will find Mike & Ed’s an easy stop just off Crawford Road, close enough to downtown for a lunch break and casual enough for a family dinner after a day at the river. Nearly forty years after Mike Gullat and Ed Cook first bought the place, the restaurant still runs on the idea they started with: cook the barbecue the way the neighborhood already liked it, and keep doing that well.